Road Trip

This weekend we took a family road trip. We towed our 5th wheel to Chandler, AZ (Phoenix area) to visit our friends and my sister Marcy, and to check up on our rental property in Tempe, AZ. This was Piper's first trip out of state.

If you voted either 2 or 4 stops on the poll, you were right. The drive out was 8 hours driveway to driveway, including 2 stops--once in Yuma for dinner and the indoor playground, and again in Gila Bend to pee and feed Piper again. The drive back took longer (nearly 9 1/2 hours), but we left earlier in the day so it all worked out okay. We stopped 4 times, which included lunch and dinner, dumping the sewer, and an extra rest stop (for Chris who couldn't hold it in all the way from Gila Bend to El Centro). The drive was good overall. The girls needed me to sit in the back with them for some entertainment half the time, but I'm so happy with them for making it all that way.

Our friends Heather and Jeff just had a pool installed in their back yard and that was our salvation in the 107 degree heat. The air conditioning in our trailer could only cool it inside to 85 degrees (90 in the front) during the day, so we pretty much only went in there to sleep at night (the AC did fine when it was only 90 degrees out). After getting in and out of the pool, we actually felt cold--so awesome! Their pool is beautiful and has a shallow toddler area which the kiddos loved. Addisyn swam 5 times in the 3 days and now kicks her feet, will put her face in voluntarily, and blows bubbles (kind of). I had fun using our new waterproof camera at and in the pool. Notice the picture I took of Addisyn putting her face in the water (it's hard to tell the camera is under water, but notice the bubbles on her hands and the surface was at about Addisyn's eyebrows).

It was really neat to spend some time with our friends because we don't get to see them very often. We got to see Bryce for the 2nd time since he was born and they got to see Piper for the first time. It was funny though because Bryce is 10 months old, a pound heavier and almost as tall as Addisyn who is twice his age (20 months). Of the four kids, those two played the most together. Austin is 3 1/2 and shared his toys well; Addisyn especially loved his wooden train set.

The men (Chris and Jeff) suffered in the heat while working on the rental house. They fixed a few things so maybe we can write the trip off as a business expense?

On Sunday we hung out with Aunt Marcy at her zoo--I mean, house. Addisyn liked petting the doggies and kittens. She even got to help bottle feed one of the kitties. Marcy filled a little wading pool with water and threw ice in it to keep it cool. Addisyn tried picking up the ice, but it was melting so fast, she could hardly get any. Marcy is excited to move back home to San Diego after a recent job offer, so we packed a truck bed full of boxes of her stuff to bring home. Yay for Aunt Marcy coming back!!!

Click here for a slide show of our trip.